Member bios
- Marea Atkinson
- John Barbour
- Steve Carson
- Kathleen Connellan
- Sonia Donnellan
- Ruth Fazakerley
- Gini Lee
- Kay Lawrence
- Steve Loo
- Jim Moss
- Ian North
- Esther Ratner
- Olga Sankey
- Irmina Van Niele
- Dr Linda Marie Walker
- Dr Pam Zeplin
Marea Atkinson
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: position
Research focus: the nexus between visual art and astronomy; sound and gastronomy.
Recent work:
Exhibitions Reflections from Elsewhere that explored light and darkness based on installation works of artificial, visual/sound environments that inhabited vacant rooms and spaces investigating time, light and the semblance of nature. Liquid Space was a research project with a series of digital prints that explored the inter-relationship between nature and astronomy. The Shard Series, (Oxford University Museum, UK, 2003), explored the interpretations of spatial concepts in the work of Lucio Fontana.
Collections: The Spectator Series, an ongoing project, has taken the form of sculpture, prints, neon, installation, that explores time, aspects of power, humanity and nature. Selections of these works are held in major collections, including Brooklyn Museum, NY, Kornhaus Museum, Switzerland, Detroit Institute of Art, MI, and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
Key Publications: Her work has been published in Memorie Della Societa Astronomica Italiana.
Other: Marea is currently preparing for a project in Chicago in 2005.
John Barbour
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: Research Degrees Coordinator
Research focus:
Recent work:
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Other:
Steven Carson
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile:
Research focus: improvisation as a generative strategy for installation
practice; décor and domestic style in relation to contemporary visual arts
practice; the appropriation of marginal creative practices by professional
contemporary artists.
Recent work: Recent work has been published through individual exhibitions
including Air Kiss, (2002 at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide);
Decorum: Retro Chic, (2001 at Global Arts Link, Ipswich); Lines Going Somewhere
(2001 at Upstart Gallery, Port Adelaide); Telephone 2000, (University Art
Museum, University Of South Australia); Memento 2000, (CAST (Contemporary Art
Services Tasmania) Hobart). Additional recent works have been published within
curated group exhibitions including: less ordinary legends, (2004 Toowoomba
Regional Art Gallery); Homostrata, (2003 Artspace Adelaide Festival Centre);
Lounging Topographies, (2003 Light Square Gallery, Adelaide).
Key Publications:
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Other:
Kathleen Connellan
School:Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
Academic Profile:
Research focus: The role of design in politics; the design of domestic products,
their domestic environment and the promotion of such products or crafted items
in history. The politics of gender and race and the construction of such
stereotypes in the interests of late Western capitalism; interpretations of
modernism within repressive ideological systems; domesticity and domestic design
in racist patriarchal systems; craft and hierarchical divisions in the arts;
graphic design and propaganda; design as a culture broker in history.
Recent work:
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Other:
Sonia Donnellan
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: PhD Candidate. Title:
Research focus: representations of the 'maternal experience' in contemporary
visual arts; use by artists of feminist psychoanalytical theories to inform
their work and how this in turn contributes to contemporary understandings of
maternal subjectivity. I am particularly interested in how artists have
responded to differing perpectives of maternal ambivalence, both as experienced
by the mother and also by the child for the mother. Included in my research will
be the theories of postmodernists, such as Julia Kristeva and Toril Moi, that
look at the maternal subject and the mother in visual art. As a
sculptor/installation artist, my research is studio based and uses three
dimensional objects, that are of and from the home. They will be combined with
forms that I have created from mixed media. One such media that I am currently
looking to incorporate into my studio research is sugar and I will be
undertaking a patisserie course to explore this potential and develop further a
cross disciplinary practice. My current research builds on issues that have been
a focus for my work throughout my undergraduate programme.
Recent work:
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Other:
Ruth Fazakerley
BSc Hons (Adelaide), BA Hons (UniSA), MFA (Dundee)
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: PhD Candidate. Thesis title: Negotiating public space: discourses of public art
Research focus: Through the study of particular public art projects, I am concerned with examining the ways in which public art discourse is shaped and reproduced across a variety of sites, including those of art, government, retailing, transport, and urban design; and to consider the effects of such discourse on everyday socio-spatial relations. Keywords: public art, urban design, vision, mobility, spectatorship, subjectivity, governmentality, cultural policy, public space.
Recent work Seminars: "Japanese Stories: Public art in Japan in the context of urban renewal programs", University of South Australia, December 2004; "Public Art in Japan", Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee, October 2004; "Shaping vision, mobility & identities: the uses of public art in Australian urban spaces", Contemporary Art Inquiry at Nagoya University, Nagoya, 1 June 2004. Exhibitions: 1999 Coordinator/Curator, Public Exposure, temporary public art, Hutt Street, Adelaide; 1998 All This and Heaven Too, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia
Key Publications: Selected Public Art Projects in Japan: travel report and resources database (2004) http://www.geocities.com.au/public_art_research/japan
2003, "A Street for the People? Rundle Mall, public art and expertise", Doing Cultural Geography, Institute of Australian Geography Cultural Geography Study Group Meeting, Melbourne University, 29 - 30 September 2003 (unpublished paper)
2001, "Intersections: public art and road space" R Fazakerley and J Bonham, 20th Century Heritage. Our recent cultural legacy, Australia ICOMOS National Conference, Adelaide, 28 Nov - 1 December 2001
"Public Art in Australia" kunstdtadtstadtkunst (48): 26, Summer 2001. Newsletter of the Berufseverband Bildender Kunstler, Berlin
Collections:
Awards: Mawson Lakes Fellowship Program Scholarship (2003); Joyner Bequest (1999); Anne & Gordon Samstag Scholarship (1995)
Other:
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Gini Lee
School: Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
Academic Profile:
Research focus:
Recent work:
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Other:
Kay Lawrence
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: Head of School
Research focus: practices and meanings of textiles with a particular focus on
gender, place and representation.My practice encompasses woven tapestry, drawing
and other textile processes as well as writing about contemporary Australian
textiles. I make work for both public and private contexts.
Recent work: My most recent work was a collaborative work with designer John
Nowland commissioned for the glazed entry of the State Library of South
Australia. The work comprised four elements, a stone greeting, a wall text, a
carpet and a coil of string. Drawn from research into European and Kuarna
knowledge systems, each element makes reference to the connection between
textile processes and metaphors and the transmission of knowledge through
narrative and observation. Photograph of glazed entry showing string ellipse.
Photograph by John Gollings
Key Publications:
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Other:
Steve Loo
School:Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Program Director of the Architecture Program and Senior
Lecturer in design and theory with specific foci on urban design, cross cultural
studies and digital experimentation.
Research focus: general research interest is on the relationship between
ontology and the production of theory. He has published on topics such as
banality and the generic within an imperative for a new theory of subjectivity
in capitalism; the relations between language, affect and life; image and the
machinic as part of a biophilosophy of the contemporary subject, alternative
ethico-aesthetic and ecological models for human action; and the indeterminacy
of experimental digital thinking. He has also an interest in communities,
consultation, and social justice.
Recent work:
Key Publications:
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Awards:
Other: Steve is a practicing architect and Partner of architectural and
interpretive practice Mulloway Studio; and strategic planning, urban design and
learning research collaborative partnership Mulloway Fisher.
Jim Moss
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: (Act) Research Degrees Coordinator
Research focus: revolutionary modernism and postrevolutionary contemporary
consumerism; video based text as a research tool. My interest in video based
text as a research tool is ongoing, although spasmodic, along with an abiding
interest in furthering the possibilities of promoting televisual documentation
of local visual art/design production.I am also in the process of writing a
discussion paper that engages with the current debate on the ambiguities and
hybrid nature of studio based research in the visual arts in the context of
expected research outcomes in the contemporary academy.
Recent work:
Key Publications: Kathleen Connellan and myself have had a paper accepted for
the FUTUREGROUND design conference in Melbourne in October. This paper conflates
the appliance revolution and contemporary design theory in the dual repressive
contexts of revolutionary modernism and postrevolutionary contemporary
consumerism, This paper is to be published in the conference publications.
Collections:
Awards:
Other:
Ian North
(Vic., Wtgn), MA (Flin) MA, MFA (UNM)
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts (with both School of Art and
Hawke Institute); Visiting Researcher, Art History, University of Adelaide
Research focus: contemporary art, including the intersection of painting and
photography (pursued in studio as well as academically); re-examining the
relationship of aesthetics and content; matters concerning landscape and beauty
in relation to cultural identity and globalism, viewed from both art and
philosophical perspectives; impact of Indigenous art on non-Indigenous art.
Recent work: Sail Away (paintings) Apartment, Melbourne, 2004 Key works:
Canberra Suite, 1980-81 (colour photographs); Pseudo-Panoramas (colour
photographs plus painting) three series 1985-1988
Key Publications: "Open Letter to the Hon. Mike Rann, Premier and Minister for
the Arts, Concerning the Matter of a Museum of Contemporary Art for South
Australia," Broadsheet, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, 31. 2. 2002:
8-9
"StarAboriginality." Postcolonial+Art: Where Now? Ed. Charles Green. Sydney:
Artspace Visual Art Centre, 2001. n.p.
Expanse: Aboriginalies, spatialities and the politics of ecstasy Adelaide:
University of South Australia Art Museum, 1998
The Art of Margaret Preston (ed., co-author) 1980
The Art of Dorrit Black, 1979
Hans Heysen Centennial Retrospective (ed., co-author) 1977
Collections: Represented in the following public collectionsÑArtbank; Art
Gallery of NSW; Art Gallery of SA; Flinders University; Griffith University;
National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Queensland Art
Gallery and the Riddoch Gallery, Mt. Gambier.
Awards: Best Book on art published in Australasia, 2001, Art Association of
Australia and New Zealand: Christine Nicholls and Ian North, Kathleen Petyarre:
Genius of Place (Wakefield Press), (joint winner with Andrew Sayers, Australian
Art )
Other:
Esther Ratner
BFA Washington University (USA). MFA University of Michigan (USA)
School: Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Senior lecturer in Industrial Design
Research focus: the effect of matter's tangible surface attributes; texture,
topography, thermal conductivity, vibrational frequency, chemical structure,
electromagnetic fields; on human tactile perception and aesthetic preference.
Recent work: Her current research seeks to empirically test the hypothesis that
materials have a physical memory signature, a history of transformations and
interventions that can be 'felt' via physical contact. If this premise is proved
valid, it supports a theory that she has developed called, The Animate Object
Theory, which presents a hierarchical rather than binary condition of life and
suggests that designers and makers of objects have an effect on the animacy of
the things they create.
Key Publications:
Collections:
Awards:
Other: Prior to moving to Australia four years ago, she taught industrial design
for 11 years and had been the Associate Director of the School of Design at
Arizona State University (USA) following four years as Industrial Design
Supervisor for the Kellwood Co. (a Fortune 500 Corporation and the largest
recreation products manufacturer in the United States).
Olga Sankey
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile:
Research focus: I am interested in exploring the relationship between word and
image, the visual properties of text and in exploring ways of incorporating
text, printed or hand written, within an artwork. The abstract nature of the
alphabetic writing system allows for the visual manipulation of text and words,
and the terrain that lies between writing and image can be examined at different
points and investigated in many different ways to challenge established
conventions of reading and interpretation. I am interested in Concrete poetry
and in the possibilities of manipulating meaning using visual strategies such as
repetition, fragmentation and overlapping. In my own practice I explore this
relationship, whose history is intertwined with the history of printing, using
primarily traditional and digital printmaking techniques.
Recent work:
Key Publications:
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Other:
Irmina Van Neale
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: PhD Candidate. Thesis Title:
Research focus: The project, AMBIVALENT BELONGING, is a studio based
investigation into the elusive concept 'belonging', from my particular migrant
position. I am interested in ideas related to the meaning of being 'in place'
and in the possibilities and dilemmas that arise from being in- and out of place
at the same time. My focus is on subjective experience, memories and emotions,
including the importance of walking and talking. I wonder where and how a sense
of cultural belonging might be located, geographically and linguistically, and
struggle with elusive notions of hybridity and gaps.
I play with the idea that one might find/form/recognize one's identity amidst
scattered fragments of meaning. I challenge some commonly held assumptions
regarding migrants, settlement and cultural difference. It's also about what's
just above and below the surface, linked to notions of home. I apply a
cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on theories in visual art, philosophy,
psychoanalysis, architecture, post-colonial cultural theory and geography,
forming connections with autobiographical research, and art practice. When
belonging is no longer a given methods of inventiveness become necessary.
In studio work I map the territories of these experiences, trying to put
continuities and discontinuities together. The whole process is expressive,
trying to make visible the weirdness of a displaced life, within a critical
context. How to put all these different elements in place is the challenge.
Recent work:
Key Publications:
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Other:
Dr Linda Marie Walker
School: Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Senior Lecturer Interior Architecture, Theory and Studio
Research focus: Conceptual and minimalist art practices, experimental writing
practices, ficto-critical research and methodologies, electronic thinking,
spatial-relations, bodies, and movement. Her post-doctoral research area is
titled
an archaeology of surfaces
Recent work: HOUSE for an historian with Sean Pickersgill. Port Adelaide; Failed
Hope Syndrome ... Unrealistic Expectations Of Self Change with John Barbour.
June 27 - July 9, 2003 Project Space, Contemporary Art Centre of South
Australia.
Web
archive to these and other works on
an archaeology of surfaces, design by Teri
Hoskin
Key Publications:
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Awards:
Other:
Dr
Pamela Zeplin
BA(Hons)(Monash), M.A. (Monash)
School: South Australian School of Art
Academic Profile: Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory. PhD Candidate
College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Thesis Title: "Re-orienting
Australia: Art & the Asia-Pacific 1970-1987" at the .
Research focus: cross cultural-issues, cultural diversity in art education,
contemporary performance and flight and sexuality
Recent work:
Key Publications: Pamela has been publishing a range of criticism and essays, as
well as presenting research at major conferences throughout the region since
1985
Collections:
Awards:
Other: Since 1998 Pamela has been working with Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre
and industry partners to co-ordinate Public Forums in the Visual Arts. She was a
visiting Scholar at Dunedin School of Art in 1995, and Australian National
University in 1999 and 2000. Teaching specialisations include: Asia-Pacific art,
arts writing, and performance. With the Unapon School and a number of indigenous
lecturers, Pamela has developed a joint course in Aboriginal Art. Postgraduate
supervision topics include Malaysian-Australian contemporary visual arts
exchange, Japanese influence on Australian studio pottery, Reformasi in
Indonesian art, interior space in the work of expatriate South Australian women
artists, Lutheran influences on Hermansburg pottery, the 'undead'(art, abjection
& the animal corpse in contemporary art) and the transformative dimension in
Hindu and postmodern dance.